Multimedia Mania/abacus-multimedia-mania.iso/dp/0132/01321.txt

Text File | 1993-07-27 | 9KB | 189 lines

$Unique_ID{bob01321}
$Pretitle{}
$Title{Adventures Of Huckleberry Finn, The
Pap Starts In On A New Life}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{Twain, Mark}
$Affiliation{}
$Subject{judge
i'll
old
says
now
told
ain't
away
hand
he'd}
$Date{}
$Log{}
Title:       Adventures Of Huckleberry Finn, The
Author:      Twain, Mark

Pap Starts In On A New Life

     I had shut the door to.  Then I turned around, and there he was.  I used
to be scared of him all the time, he tanned me so much.  I reckoned I was
scared now, too; but in a minute I see I was mistaken - that is, after the
first jolt, as you may say, when my breath sort of hitched, he being so
unexpected; but right away after I see I warn't scared of him worth bothring
about.

     He was most fifty, and he looked it.  His hair was long and tangled and
greasy, and hung down, and you could see his eyes shining through like he was
behind vines.  It was all black, no gray; so was his long, mixed-up whiskers.
There warn't no color in his face, where his face showed; it was white; not
like another man's white, but a white to make a body sick, a white to make a
body's flesh crawl - a tree-toad white, a fish-belly white.  As for his
clothes - just rags, that was all.  He had one ankle resting on t'other knee;
the boot on that foot was busted, and two of his toes stuck through, and he
worked them now and then.  His hat was laying on the floor - an old black
slouch with the top caved in, like a lid.

     I stood a-looking at him; he set there a-looking at me, with his chair
tilted back a little.  I set the candle down.  I noticed the window was up;
so he had clumb in by the shed.  He kept a-looking me all over.  By and by he
says:

     "Starchy clothes - very.  You think you're a good deal of a big-bug,
don't you?"

     "Maybe I am, maybe I ain't," I says.

     "Don't you give me none o' your lip," says he.  "You've put on
considerable many frills since I been away.  I'll take you down a peg before
I get done with you.  You're educated, too, they say - can read and write.
You think you're better'n your father, now, don't you, because he can't?
I'll take it out of you.  Who told you you might meddle with such hifalut'n
foolishness, hey? - who told you you could?"

     "The widow.  She told me."

     "The widow, hey? - and who told the widow she could put in her shovel
about a thing that ain't none of her business?"

     "Nobody never told her."

     "Well, I'll learn her how to meddle.  And looky here - you drop that
school, you hear?  I'll learn people to bring up a boy to put on airs over
his own father and let on to be better'n what he is.  You lemme catch you
fooling around that school again, you hear?  Your mother couldn't read, and
she couldn't write, nuther, before she died.  None of the family couldn't
before they died.  I can't; and here you're a-swelling yourself up like this.
I ain't the man to stand it - you hear?  Say, lemme hear you read."

     I took up a book and begun something about General Washington and the
wars.  When I'd read about a half a minute, he fetched the book a whack with
his hand and knocked it across the house.  He says:

     "It's so.  You can do it.  I had my doubts when you told me.  Now looky
here; you stop that putting on frills.  I won't have it.  I'll lay for you,
my smarty; and if I catch you about that school I'll tan you good.  First you
know you'll get religion, too.  I never see such a son."

     He took up a little blue and yaller picture of some cows and a boy, and
says:

     "What's this?"

     "It's something they give me for learning my lessons good."

     He tore it up, and says:

     "I'll give you something better - I'll give you a cowhide."

     He set there a-mumbling and a-growling a minute, and then he says:

     "Ain't you a sweet-scented dandy, though?  A bed; and bedclothes; and a
look'n'-glass; and a piece of carpet on the floor - and your own father got
to sleep with the hogs in the tanyard.  I never see such a son.  I bet I'll
take some o' these frills out o' you before I'm done with you.  Why, there
ain't no end to your airs - they say you're rich.  Hey? - how's that?"

     "They lie - that's how."

     "Looky here - mind how you talk to me; I'm a-standing about all I can
stand now - so don't gimme no sass.  I've been in town two days, and I hain't
heard nothing but about you bein' rich.  I heard about it away down the
river, too.  That's why I come.  You git me that money to-morrow - I want
it."

     "I hain't got no money."

     "It's a lie.  Judge Thatcher's got it.  You git it.  I want it."

     "I hain't got no money, I tell you.  You ask Judge Thatcher; he'll tell
you the same."

     "All right.  I'll ask him; and I'll make him pungle, too, or I'll know
the reason why.  Say, how much you got in your pocket?  I want it."

     "I hain't got only a dollar, and I want that to -"

     "It don't make no difference what you want it for - you just shell it
out."

     He took it and bit it to see if it was good, and then he said he was
going down-town to get some whisky; said he hadn't had a drink all day.  When
he had got out on the shed he put his head in again, and cussed me for
putting on frills and trying to be better than him; and when I reckoned he
was gone he come back and put his head in again, and told me to mind about
that school, because he was going to lay for me and lick me if I didn't drop
that.

     Next day he was drunk, and he went to Judge Thatcher's and bullyragged
him, and tried to make him give up the money; but he couldn't, and then he
swore he'd make the law force him.

     The judge and the widow went to law to get the court to take me away
from him and let one of them be my guardian; but it was a new judge that had
just come, and he didn't know the old man; so he said courts mustn't
interfere and separate families if they could help it; said he'd druther not
take a child away from its father.  So Judge Thatcher and the widow had to
quit on the business.

     That pleased the old man till he couldn't rest.  He said he'd cowhide me
till I was black and blue if I didn't raise some money for him.  I borrowed
three dollars from Judge Thatcher, and pap took it and got drunk, and went
a-blowing around and cussing and whooping and carrying on; and he kept it up
all over town, with a tin pan, till most midnight; then they jailed him, and
next day they had him before court, and jailed him again for a week.  But he
said he was satisfied; said he was boss of his son, and he'd make it warm for
him.

     When he got out the new judge said he was a-going to make a man of him.
So he took him to his own house, and dressed him up clean and nice, and had
him to breakfast and dinner and supper with the family, and was just old pie
to him, so to speak.  And after supper he talked to him about temperance and
such things till the old man cried, and said he'd been a fool, and fooled
away his life; but now he was a-going to turn over a new leaf and be a man
nobody wouldn't be ashamed of, and he hoped the judge would help him and not
look down on him.  The judge said he could hug him for them words; so he
cried, and his wife she cried again; pap said he'd been a man that had
always been misunderstood before, and the judge said he believed it.  The
old man said that what a man wanted that was down was sympathy, and the
judge said it was so; so they cried again.  And when it was bedtime the old
man rose up and held out his hand, and says:

     "Look at it, gentlemen and ladies all; take a-hold of it; shake it.
There's a hand that was the hand of a hog; but it ain't so no more; it's the
hand of a man that's started in on a new life, and'll die before he'll go
back.  You mark them words - don't forget I said them.  It's a clean hand
now; shake it - don't be afeard."

     So they shook it, one after the other, all around, and cried.  The
judge's wife she kissed it.  Then the old man he signed a pledge - made his
mark.  The judge said it was the holiest time on record, or something like
that.  Then they tucked the old man into a beautiful room, which was the
spare room, and in the night some time he got powerful thirsty and clumb out
on to the porch-roof and slid down a stanchion and traded his new coat for a
jug of forty - rod, and clumb back again and had a good old time; and toward
daylight he crawled out again, drunk as a fiddler, and rolled off the porch
and broke his left arm in two places, and was most froze to death when
somebody found him after sun-up.  And when they come to look at that spare
room they had to take soundings before they could navigate it.

     The judge he felt kind of sore.  He said he reckoned a body could reform
the old man with a shotgun, maybe, but he didn't know no other way.